This invention relates to an apparatus for driving a lifter reel in a fabric wet processing machine and, more particularly, to such an apparatus for use in a machine having a jet for circulating the fabric.
Textile web materials in rope form are conventionally processed by apparatus and methods wherein a length of material with its ends sewn together to form the fabric into an endless loop is circulated within a cylindrical vessel while being subjected to treatment liquid, such as a dye liquor. The vessel typically contains a treatment chamber containing a bath of treatment liquor through which the textile rope passes in a compact plaited plug form. Some modern jet dyeing and finishing machines apply the treatment liquid primarily using the jet nozzle, resulting in little or no submerging of the rope plug in any liquid in the treatment chamber. In these machines, a rope circulating system progressively withdraws the rope from the leading end of the plug and returns it to the trailing end of the plug under the influence of the processing liquid being applied and circulated by a jet assembly through which the rope passes during circulation.
As each section of wet processing machine may have a different length of textile web for treatment at any one time, individual electric motors have been provided to drive the lifter reels at different rates in order to cause each of the sections to have the same cycle time. Thus, during the loading of the textile web material, the idling of the lifter reel may be adjusted to determine the load cycle. The individual motors typically cause the lifter reel in the section carrying the longest rope to run at maximum speed and allow the lifter reel treating the shortest rope to run at the slowest speed so that the cycle times are equal.
One problem with the machines described above is the cost of providing electric motors to drive multiple lifter reels within the machines in an individual fashion. One attempt at overcoming this problem can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,685,325 to Carpenter. The Carpenter patent discloses the driving of a lifter reel in a textile wet processing apparatus by fluid power created by impingement on the lifter reel of a pressurized stream of dyeing liquor. While Carpenter may remove the need for individual electric motors, the apparatus disclosed therein still presents problems with respect to the ability to appropriately control the speed of the lifter reel.